# thoughtbot/clearance

Rails authentication with email & password.

Repository: https://github.com/thoughtbot/clearance
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/clearance
Homepage: https://thoughtbot.com
Language: Ruby
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: clearance, ruby, thoughtbot, rails, rails-authentication, rubygem
Last push: 2026-07-16T18:42:45+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 85/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 92, release rhythm 68, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 6552, "days_push": 48, "days_rel": 138, "gap_med": 69.0, "n_releases_24m": 7}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 3736, forks 464 (observed 2026-08-28T04:08:15.820094+00:00)

## What it is
Clearance is a Rails engine providing email and password authentication for Ruby on Rails applications. It offers opinionated defaults for sign-up, sign-in, password reset, and cookie-based sessions, all easily overridable via configuration.

## Use cases
- add email and password authentication to a Rails app
- implement user sign-up and sign-in in Ruby on Rails
- handle password reset flows in Rails
- protect controller actions with a require_login filter
- manage remember-token cookies for persistent sessions
- replace Devise with a simpler authentication gem

## When to choose
- you need simple, well-tested email/password auth in a Rails 7.2+ app
- you want opinionated defaults that are easy to override
- you prefer a small authentication engine over a full-featured framework like Devise

## When to avoid
- you need OAuth, SAML, or multi-factor authentication out of the box
- you are not using Ruby on Rails
- you need API-token-based authentication rather than cookie sessions

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: active
- function: auth, middleware, routing
- domain: web-development, backend, security, developer-tools
- platform: ruby
- tags: rails, rails-engine, email-password-authentication, rubygem, bcrypt, session-management, web-server

## Member repositories
- thoughtbot/clearance (main) score 85

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:15.820094+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T18:29:11.119127+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/thoughtbot/clearance (fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:15.820094+00:00, sha 359948c5ec23)
  - homepage: https://thoughtbot.com (fetched 2026-08-29T09:23:39.391957+00:00, sha 5510254df796)
  - site_page: https://thoughtbot.com/case-studies/closeknit-health (fetched 2026-08-29T09:23:39.401365+00:00, sha ec773542ed58)
  - site_page: https://thoughtbot.com/services (fetched 2026-08-29T09:23:39.403420+00:00, sha 5b152b8c27da)
  - site_page: https://thoughtbot.com/our-company (fetched 2026-08-29T09:23:39.405233+00:00, sha 9e2e18b981fb)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.